Sunday Links
Update on the readiness crisis. Electronic warfare. Jedi cloud computing contract. Aviation crisis. Revolving door stats.
Year: 2018
DOD scandal of the week: fraud involving billions
Federal prosecutors say the three men — all executives connected to defense contractor Anham FZCO based in the United Arab Emirates — were awarded an $8 billion contract to provide supplies and food to American troops in Afghanistan in 2012.
The ineffectiveness of cost-effectiveness analyses
Cost Operational Effectiveness Analyses (COEA). The COEA done for the major Army projects are of spotty quality and in some cases non-existent. What should be […]
How Google Works: acquisition review (part 1)
The book How Google Works, by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, offers many insights in a post-industrial (or post-corporate) world. I’ll discuss the book’s ideas […]
Wild ride on the Trump defense budget
It is interesting how fragile the DOD is with respect to small changes in the budget plans. We find strong push-back from defense insiders that modest cuts will lead to large risks. Either you scale back military operations or you cut investment in new systems …
Has $21 trillion gone missing?
One tip-off is the amount of Ocasio-Cortez’s “accounting errors” is far bigger than the actual Pentagon spending from 1998 to 2015, which was $8.5 trillion. In fact, it’s also far bigger than the amount the government has spent on national security since 1940 and, in all likelihood, in the nation’s history.
A bureaucrat to be crushed: the story of Gordon Rule
When the company officials had been asked to leave the room, the admiral in charge of shipbuilding told Warner the contractor’s demand for an extra $10‐million on the spot and $4‐million soon afterward was reasonable and ought to be paid. But then a ruddy, expensively but conservatively dressed civilian interrupted. “Admiral,” he said, “over my dead body will you reform that contract and give them $10‐million. This is the goddamnedest thing I ever heard of, a contractor coming in and throwing a piece of paper on the table and saying that to the Navy.”
Sunday Links
Report confirms DOD will investigate SOCOM professionalism and ethics. Imagine This: F-35 Stealth Fighters Armed with Lasers. Yeah imagine that. “The first airborne tests are […]
Kling Answers a Question on Defense Economics
Here’s my question to Arnold Kling: I was wondering if you could comment on the fact that you’ll never see papers or courses in defense […]
How to Invest in Randomness and Optionality
Think about that for a second. When there is a 90% that companies are bad, and a 90% accuracy rate being able to identify them, I still have a 50% hit rate of being right. So someone with 90% accuracy is no better than flipping a coin.
Rickover slams the Laird/Packard Reforms
In my opinion the present situation in this regard is worse than I have ever seen it. Further, I predict that the way the present bureaucracy would implement your [Packard’s] proposed directive will make matters still worse.
Questionable advertisement from defense industry
Arms manufacturers are spending millions of pounds a year promoting their brands in Britain’s schools, the Observer has learned… BAE Systems visited 420 schools across the UK last year and prepared lesson plans for children as young as seven.
Putin on US defense “mistakes and extra costs”
“It’s a typical mistake made by an empire,” Putin said. “An empire always thinks that it’s so powerful that it can afford some mistakes and extra costs. But mistakes and costs multiply, and a moment comes when they become overwhelming in both security and economic spheres.”
Is science slowing down? A dissenting opinion.
We are confronted with the fact that Moore’s Law has led to transistor density growing at 35% per year, creating a vast increase in the number of calculations that can be performed per second, for a constant dollar expenditure. Great! Then, we are told there are 18x more people working in transistor-related research today than in 1971.
Sunday Links
Rep. Thornberry and Sen. Inhofe plead, Don’t Cut Military Spending, Mr. President. Related to that is my recent post on strategies for cutting the defense […]